Imagine a situation where you are in the middle of a seven-mile walk, and a traveller begins walking alongside you and another friend on the journey. You have never met this stranger before, but he seems to know more about you than is comfortable. “What are you discussing?” is how Jesus opens the conversation with Cleopas, one of the disciples walking to Emma's. Read more

The Holy Triduum at Blackfriars begins with the morning service of Tenebrae on Maundy Thursday. As the candles are progressively extinguished, we turn our minds to the events of Our Lord's Passion. Read more

With thirty pieces of silver, Judas betrays our Lord to the Chief Priests. Such a price has become shorthand in the popular imagination for perfidy and treachery, a feeble allusion to Judas’ ultimate betrayal. But, we might ask, why this price? Why not fifty pieces of silver? Or ten? Read more

Christian are often exhorted to unite themselves with the Cross of Christ. We are told to ‘offer it up’ in the face of suffering and inconveniences: in all tribulation, says St John of the Cross, ‘remember Christ crucified and be silent’. It would be a mistake to see St John’s advice as a rebuke or a callous dismissal of our pains, even if the ‘offer it up’ advice of some others is precisely that. For St John, like any and every genuine mystic of the Catholic Church, knew that the Cross was anything but the Father’s callous dismissal, disinterest or even, as some Protestants claim, desertion of Christ in his suffering. Read more

Peter Cambiano was born in Chieri, in Piedmont, in 1320. He was drawn to the Dominicans by his devotion to the rosary. Our Lady of the Rosary was the special patroness of the region where he lived. He joined the Dominican Order at an early age. Among his talents, it is said that he had a loud clear voice, which was very useful at that time when he had to preach in the open air. He received an appropriate formation that allowed him to be prepared for controversy with the Waldensians, a heretic sect spread in northern Italy.Read more

In today’s Gospel we heard an extraordinary dialogue between Jesus and a group of 'Jews who had believed in him’. This last point is important: we have here an antagonistic dialogue between Jesus and his own followers, not some Pharisees or anyone like that.Read more

“In the Psalms, we drink divine praise at its pure and stainless source, in all its primitive sincerity and perfection,” teaches Thomas Merton. I must confess that, whilst I’m sure Thomas Merton is right, I have had to learn to to love the Psalms. It certainly did not come automatically to me, although singing them together with the brothers helped me find a ‘technique’ for making their prayer my own. Over the years the Psalms collected in the Divine Office have become like old friends, ever fresh and ever new as they recur in their comforting cyclical regularity. In their familiarity—and despite their cyclical recurrence—they continue to surprise, comfort, console, and confront. It has been a gift and a delight to receive the obligation of praying them.